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Riley stuffed a pig in a blanket into her mouth and chewed furiously as she glared at Grace Brighton. “Says the woman dating a man who looks like Hugh Jackman.”
Hugh’s doppelgänger chose that moment to return with drink refills.
“And he brings me my Manhattans,” Riley said, eagerly accepting the cocktail. “Clearly not all men are bad, just the ones who want to set up shop up in here.” Riley gestured toward the vicinity of her lady bits.
“Super classy, Ri,” Grace said, taking a sip of her own drink.
Riley shrugged. She’d always put class in the nice-to-have category. There were some women who had it in spades. Take Grace, whose classic good looks were the kind people put on stamps and shit, all mahogany hair and perfectly even features.
But Riley? While no slouch in the looks department when she took the time to curl her hair and do the eyeliner thing, she knew she had more of the uh-oh-that-one’s-trouble look going on.
She knew the words siren and sex kitten got thrown around whenever she bothered to get dolled up, and Riley didn’t mind a bit. It was a lot easier to convince people you were a sex expert when you looked the part. A tight dress could hide a lot. Like, say, the fact that you’d gone most of your life without anyone seeing what was under the dress.
Jake, Grace’s ridiculously good-looking boyfriend, was watching Riley in amusement as she took a bracing gulp of her Manhattan. “Does your father know that you drink bourbon instead of Bushmills? Isn’t that some sort of crime against your kin?”
“I don’t advertise that little fact at family dinners, no. But for the record, my love for Basil Hayden’s would be nothing if he ever heard you say the word Bushmills to his face.”
Jake’s eyebrows went up. “Your dad doesn’t like Irish whisky?”
“Oh, he does. But we’re Catholic, which puts us solidly in the Jameson camp.” She patted his forearm reassuringly. “Don’t fret about the mistake. It was too much to ask that you be brilliant and beautiful.”
Actually, Jake Malone was both, but Grace would kill her if she pumped up his already inflated ego.
His brow furrowed. “Wait, so you’re telling me he bases his liquor preferences on—”
A hand slid up between their faces, effectively ending the conversation. “Guess what?” Grace said pleasantly. “That’s boring. Also, I want to get the scoop on Riley’s date on Friday, not hear about ancient Irish feuds and Riley’s penchant for Tennessee whisky.”
“Kentucky,” Riley corrected.
Grace pointed to her own straight face. “See this? Uninterested.” She turned her finger to point at Riley’s face. “And that? That is avoiding.”
“Steven Moore was a turd,” Riley said with a shrug. “What more is there to talk about?”
Sam. We could talk about Sam. You could help me figure out how to stop thinking about him.
“I thought you liked this Steven,” Grace said.
“I did. I totally did.” Sort of. “Right up to the point that he brought out the handcuffs before we even made it back to my place.”
Grace and Jake both had the good sense to wince.
“Right?” Riley said with a disgusted shake of her head. “I should have known when the first kiss was lame.”
“I thought you said the kiss was decent,” Grace said.
“Well, that’s every guy’s dream,” Jake said. “To be decent.”
Riley pointed at him. “See? Jake gets it. Decent was my way of saying he didn’t have halitosis, but neither did he exactly rock my world.”
“Do I rock your world?” Jake said, sliding an arm around Grace’s back and pulling her close.
Riley averted her eyes as they exchanged one of those soft, dreamy kisses that seemed so natural for them but were utterly foreign to her. Riley had mistakenly thought that Julie Greene and Mitchell Forbes—Stiletto’s other power couple—were some sort of gross anomaly of in-loveness, but Grace and Jake were giving them a run for their money on the totally smitten scale.
“I’m going to go find the crab cakes,” Riley muttered.
“I’d tell you not to eat too many, but your body literally repels fat,” Grace said, never tearing her gaze away from Jake’s.
Riley ignored her, her eyes scanning for the white shirts of the serving staff. Yeah, so she had a great metabolism. She liked to think it was the universe’s way of evening the score for depriving her of sex.
